


2011, the Redux

by toli-a (togina)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-07
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-27 02:53:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6266623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togina/pseuds/toli-a
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky isn't sure what he's doing back in 2011. (He isn't sure what <em>to</em> do in 2011, because it's the year Steve pretends he never lived.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	2011, the Redux

**Author's Note:**

> For a prompt about Bucky traveling back in time to just after Steve was unfrozen, when he thinks that Bucky is dead. (Bucky's birthday in this is invented, but quite frankly, given the multiple iterations of all these characters, I'm not going to call that canon divergence.)

Bucky landed on an empty seat in the N train, just as it was rattling its way over the bridge and into Brooklyn. He slipped off of it immediately, dropping into a crouch and eyeing the startled passengers around him with suspicion. He tucked the gun away, though—this was one of those twenty-first century trains, with buttons to call the conductor and phones to call the police.

Why would the evil wizard they’d been fighting want to teleport him onto the subway? Was he trying to save Bucky the ridiculously high fare? Desperately craving an Italian ice from the stand outside Prospect Park?

Bucky shook his head, scanning the train for a more realistic threat. The crazy magician had been plotting  _ something _ , when the team showed up, something better than merely putting the Winter Soldier on public transportation and calling it a day. Then he saw Steve.

“Steve!” he called, vaulting over the nearest bench of seats and practically into Steve’s lap, dislodging the sketch pad in his haste. “Thank god you’re all right.”

Steve’s forehead had always wrinkled like a puppy’s when he was confused. Also, what had the crazed wizard done to Steve’s hair? “I’m sorry, what– _ Bucky _ ?” he screeched, his entire body suddenly rigid, hands clenched around Bucky’s arms, as though he wasn’t sure whether to tug Bucky against him or shove him away.

Emotions splintered across Steve’s face, too quick for anyone but his best friend to see, but none of them could overwrite the amazement, the disbelief, flooding through sky-blue eyes. Realization slid like ice water under Bucky’s skin. Steve hadn’t worn that expression for months, not since he’d finally gotten it through his thick skull that Bucky was really there. And Steve was a terrible actor—if this was Steve at all.

“Who the hell are you?” Bucky hissed, but the worried confusion peering back at him was all Steve.  _ Damn it _ . Bucky was going to eviscerate the Great High Magic Psychopath, as soon as he figured out what was going on. “Where are we?” he tried, glancing around the crowded train car for a clue.

“On the N train,” Steve replied, still gripping Bucky’s arms like he might wake up if he let go. “Headed into Brooklyn.” But Bucky wasn’t the only one who’d been dragged through time, forced out of his grave against his will, and Steve knew that coordinates in  _ time  _ mattered just as much as those in  _ space _ . “August 13,” he added, “2011. Twenty-nine days before your birthday,” he finished softly, staring at the lines of Bucky’s face with his lips parted, as though he could breathe Bucky in.

Unable to hold that gaze—2011,  _ Jesus _ , this was the time Steve never talked about, just out of the ice and what was he doing alone on the train, where was Romanoff or Banner or Barton when they should have been here, with Steve?—Bucky glanced at the floor and Steve’s fallen sketchbook, stared into the face of a young man wearing an old shirt and a careless grin and Bucky’s nose, the drawing half obscured where Steve had scrubbed out errors and tried to start again.

No wonder Steve never opened those sketchbooks. 2011, when Steve didn’t know that Bucky had loved him all along, when he thought Bucky was dead.

“We’re going to fix this,” Bucky heard himself promise, but there were so many things wrong—in the date, in the desperate sketch on the floor of the train, in the fractures behind Steve’s unblinking gaze—that he wasn’t sure where to begin.


End file.
